Exit, Pursued by a Bear

by E. K. Johnston

  Polly is doing that thing where she rolls her eyes without actually moving, and it’s all I can do not to laugh. Her fake spirit is in full force, but since the reporter doesn’t know her very well, she can’t tell it’s all a show.

  “What about you, Polly?” the reporter says dutifully. “What’s your favourite part?”

  “Knowing that the school is right behind me, as much as I’m right behind them,” Polly says. Her insincerity is excruciating, but only if you know what to look for. The reporter is eating it up.

  “Good, good,” the reporter murmurs to herself, writing it all down in her notebook. Then she looks up and stares straight at me. “Hermione, after your attack at the end of last summer, do you have any words of advice on how other girls can be smart, and stop such awful things happening to them?”

  “Wh-what?” I stutter. Beside me, Polly’s fake spirit melts into the floor. This isn’t in the script.

  “Maybe precautions you wish you’d taken,” the reporter says. “Or something you wish you had known about before you went to Camp Manitouwabing?”

  “I thought you were here to do an interview about the cheerleaders,” I say, desperately stalling. I know, without a doubt, that whatever my answer is will be printed verbatim in the newspaper, and that pisses me off a bit because it has blindsided me, and I should have seen it coming. I can feel Polly start to boil over and then rein herself in. She’s making me take the lead. I’ll have to come up with something quickly.

  “Camp Manitouwabing isn’t closing down,” the reporter tells me, oblivious to our sudden change in mood. “Which means that other cheerleaders from this very school will go there. Don’t you think you should do your part to help prevent such a horrible thing from happening again?”

  Anger has made my mind go blank. Even though I meant to say something profound and helpful, and maybe just a bit sarcastic, I instead say the very first thing that pops into my head: “If I was a boy, would you be asking me that?”

  “Well, no,” says the reporter. “Of course not.”

  “So let me get this straight,” says Polly, her voice deceptively calm. “You’re okay with asking a girl who was wearing a pretty dress and had nice hair, who went to the dance with her cabin mates, who drank from the same punch bowl as everyone else—you’re okay with asking that girl what mistake she made, and you wouldn’t think to ask a boy how he would avoid raping someone?”

  The reporter rocks back as if Polly has struck her, and can’t seem to find the right words.

  “Would it be a better story if Hermione had known what she was drinking? If her skirt had been two inches shorter? If she had a lower average?” Polly is practically on fire with cold now. I’ve never seen a grown-up recoil like this in my life. It gives me balance, like Polly has caught me out of the air and put me on my feet again.

  “Yeah, I’m not sure I want to answer the question,” I say. “Since it’s so underdeveloped. The only person at fault here was my rapist. Not the camp and sure as hell not me.”

  “I wasn’t trying to imply—” she starts, desperately jotting things down in the notebook, but I cut her off.

  “I don’t care. Your article had better not have anything other than my quotes about cheerleading in it. I can start a letter-writing campaign like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “And she’s the nice one,” Polly adds, all teeth. “We have to go to school now. Thank you for the interview.”

  “Good luck at the provincials,” says the reporter. It’s a completely mechanical farewell.

  Polly takes my arm and the two of us sweep out of the gym like we own the place. And really, we kind of do. On the way out, we pass Leo, who had sat for an interview before us as the unofficial leader of the boys’ half of the team. He won’t meet my gaze, as always, but I know he’s heard everything.

  We get into the change room, and Polly starts to change into her school clothes. We were in our full uniforms today, partially for the picture and partially because it’s always good to practice a few times to get to know the limitations of your skirt. I linger though. All the bruises I had are long since faded. Only the emotional damage is real, well, that and what happened when I had the abortion.

  Polly is looking at me.

  “I hadn’t really thought about it,” I say.

  “What do you mean?” she asks. She pulls her shirt over her head, and goes to fix her makeup and hair.

  “I know it wasn’t my fault,” I say. “And no one has ever suggested that it was, but that’s what everyone thinks.”

  “I do not think that,” she says. “Not even in my heart of hearts.”

  “You’re not everyone,” I say. “You’re Polly. I meant everyone else.”

  “It’s certainly what Leo thinks,” Polly says. “And it’s what television thinks. I can’t watch CSI anymore, you know. It makes me too angry.”

  “Sorry,” I say, grinning so she knows I don’t really mean it. “I know you loved that show.”

  “Shut up,” she says. “I’m being profound.”

  “I appreciate it,” I tell her. “It just struck me today, is all, when she asked. I’d never heard anyone say it out loud.”

  “People are always going to be stupid,” Polly says. “At least I think we scared her off of putting any of it in print.”

  “There is that,” I say.

  “Hurry up,” she says. “I want to talk to Caledon before class starts. She was supposed to find out which designation we got for provincials.”

  Because Ontario is the biggest province, we are divided into two parts for the provincial level of competition. The winners of both pools plus the next highest-scoring team advance. Supposedly it’s luck of the draw, but the pools always end up weighted one way or the other. If we get an easy pool, we’ll be able to relax a little bit. If we get a hard pool, we might as well give up on the idea of having a social life until late spring. Caledon might never let us out of the gym.

  I throw my clothes on and fix my hair. I wasn’t wearing makeup, and when I turn around, Polly is standing right there with lip liner. I open my mouth a bit so she can put it on, and remember, inappropriate timing and all, about how Dion had kissed me before the winter formal.

  “So, Dion kissed me before the winter formal,” I say, once she’s clear of my face and I’m probably not going to get a stripe painted on my cheek.

  “Shut the front door!” Polly says. “You let some kid in grade eleven kiss you? God, Hermione, where is your dignity?”

  I laugh so hard I have to sit down, and when Polly drags me to my feet and out the door, she’s laughing too. We’re still giggling when we get to Caledon’s office. Technically, she shares it with the three other phys ed teachers, but since they all teach math as well, they spend most of their time upstairs in the math department.

  “I don’t want to know,” says Caledon, waving us in. Years of dealing with high-strung cheerleaders have given Caledon a rather blasé approach to our interpersonal shenanigans, but she looks a little more severe than usual, too severe for it to just be that we’re in a hard pool. “But I did get our pool assignment.”

  “And?” says Polly, all business at the drop of a hat.

  “Well, St. Ignatius is in the opposite pool from us,” Caledon says. She has a completely straight face, and Polly, to her credit, manages to keep a straight face as well. She’s not officially out at school, mostly because she doesn’t care for her business to be anyone else’s, but Amy has been visiting a lot, and it’s not because she’s part of my support group.

  “That’s handy,” I say. “What else?”

  “Our pool looks pretty good,” she says. “We got both Sarnia schools, and they’ll be strong, but we can take them. I’m worried about Sir Adam Beck, out of London. But I think that’s it.”

  “Great,” says Polly. “So we go to nationals. What aren’t you telling us?”r />
  I’ve gotten so good at reading people over the last few months that I’d forgotten how hard it is to read Caledon at all. I look at her more closely, and Polly is right. She knows something she doesn’t like, and she hasn’t figured out how to tell us yet.

  “Usually some school in Toronto gets it, when it’s in Ontario,” she says. “But this year, a bunch of northern schools petitioned, and they are going to host together.”

  “That seems fair,” Polly says. “Even if they don’t qualify, they’re still lots of places, and we can deal with a long bus ride if we have to go to Thunder Bay or something”

  “It’s not in Thunder Bay,” Caledon says. “The condition was that it wouldn’t be north of Sudbury, even though that rules out every place big enough to host all the people that come with a national championship.”

  “So, what are they doing?” I ask.

  Caledon hesitates, and then leans forward.

  “They’ve rented a space that’s big enough,” she says. “There will be places for people to stay and places to eat. The actual competition will be outside, which will piss off everyone from out west, but we’ll be fine so I don’t really care.”

  “Caledon,” Polly says in a tone I’ve never heard her take with a teacher. But I’ve figured it out. It’s exactly the kind of bureaucratic nightmare that always happens whenever northern Ontario wins the right to host anything. I put my hand on Polly’s arm, because I know that when Caledon tells her, she is going to explode. Thank goodness we didn’t find this out from the reporter. Polly might have blown her head off.

  “They’ve rented the camp,” Caledon says. “The nationals this year are at Camp Manitouwabing.”

  CHAPTER 27

  I DO MY BEST NOT to think about the nationals until after we make it through the provincials. We use the same routine for both, so usually it’s not too hard. It’s a bit more difficult this time, because of what I know about the location of that final tournament, but I manage. Caledon works us very hard right up until the week before, and then leans off a bit so no one breaks anything because they’re tired or stressed. Our routines are tightly choreographed; even the downtime between songs maximizes the use of time. We have ten minutes, total, and we must spend seven and a half of them actively cheering. The clock starts the moment I, as co-captain, touch the mats and it ends when Polly finally makes her exit. The penalties for going over or under are steep, but we have practiced enough that our precision is top-notch.

  The bus ride to London is quiet. I can see everyone counting steps in their heads and mouthing the words to the music that will accompany our routine. We arrive three hours before our slot, and immediately engage in the very serious business of hair and makeup. I have no idea what the boys do, besides sit there and get more nervous, but this is when the girls finally wake up and start to act like the overly peppy girls I’m used to working with.

  “Jenny, come and sit here,” says Leftie, which is the nickname we’re currently auditioning for the brown-haired Sarah. It’s not going well.

  Jenny comes and sits, and Sarah begins to weave the gold ribbon into her braids. Everyone has their hair done up as tightly as possible today, to minimize chances of disaster, which means fishtails and French braids for those of us with long hair, and about a million pins for blonde Sarah, whose chin-length hair defies even Polly’s abilities as a hairdresser.

  “It’ll be fine,” says Karen, when blonde Sarah raises her hand to poke at her head.

  “I’m really sorry,” she says. “I didn’t think it would go like this when I cut it. I haven’t had it short in forever. But I promise it grows quickly. I’ll be fine by—”

  She cuts herself off. No thinking about nationals. I will make her leave the room and spit if she says it, and she knows I will.

  “Beach season,” she says, even though that makes no sense at all.

  “Hermione, you’re up,” says Polly, and I sit down while she plaits the ribbons into my hair. The boys are all dark haired, so they’re the other half of our school colours. Black ribbon is also much more expensive, so we’re saving it for a special occasion. Polly barely tugs at all as she finishes my hair, and before I know it, I am crowd ready.

  “Everybody up!” I say, and they all fall in for inspection. It sounds stupid, but it’s much, much better to prevent wardrobe malfunctions in the locker room than on the floor. I go up and down the line, checking skirt lines and hair spray, until I get to the end. I spin for Polly, who grins and nods.

  “All right, let’s go find the boys,” Polly says. She’s so legitimately happy and excited that the fake cheer sounds more real than ever.

  The boys all holler and catcall when they see us—in fairness I should note that the catcalling between Cameron and Alexis is mutual—and heads turn as we make our way towards them. It’s part of our pregame ritual, and it’s the part I like the best. You can’t win without cheering on the floor, but you can feel like you have, and right now I feel like anything is possible.

  “All right, huddle up,” I say, and all eighteen of us crush together. “It’s been a weird year, I know, but I wouldn’t have wanted to go through what I went through with any other group of people.”

  This is totally not the pep talk I had planned on giving. Eyebrows are starting to rise. Leo is looking at the floor. I push on.

  “You build me up, you guys,” I say. “You build me up, and that’s what cheerleading is all about. You make a person, a team, think that they can do anything because you believe in them. You believed in me, when I didn’t believe in myself. And now I believe in you. I believe in us. We are the Fighting Golden Bears, and we are going to win.”

  They whoop it up around me, and even Leo is smiling. I know that out in the audience, Caledon and Florry are waiting for us. My parents and a bunch of others made the drive down together, and they’ll be cheering when we’re announced. I invited Dr. Hutt, but he only said, “I think cheering on a cheerleader is a little existential for my tastes,” and went back to running lines for Macbeth.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” I hear the announcer call, and I clear my head of everything except the routine. “From Palermo Heights Secondary School, the Fighting Golden Bears!”

  We run out, all teeth and ribbons, and when the music starts, we are perfect. We do the whole routine, as we have done over and over again in practice, but this time it’s real. This time, it counts. This time, when we finish, the crowd goes wild, and when the judges post the highest score of the day for our performance, the yelling gets even louder.

  The bus ride home is anything but quiet, and when I get home, I am still elated. There’s a party at Mallory’s house, because her parents don’t mind if eighteen kids are very loud in the barn. Caledon has threatened death if anyone drinks, but she didn’t need to bother: Even Tig is afraid of Mallory’s mother, and thanks her very nicely for the pop she kept on ice for us all afternoon. We don’t stay too much past when it gets dark, largely because it’s still a bit chilly for outdoor parties, and when Polly drives me home, I can’t stop laughing and smiling and telling her how awesome we all are.

  My parents are in the kitchen waiting for me, and as soon as I come in the door, I know exactly why. For the first time since September, my parents sit me down for a serious, serious talk.

  “It’s not that we don’t want you to go,” Dad says right at the start. “It’s not even that we think it’s unsafe. It’s just . . . you’ve made so much progress. You’ve made it this far by never looking back. Are you sure you want to start now?”

  I wonder whether I’ll be having this same conversation with Dr. Hutt on Wednesday. More likely, they’ve already called him themselves. I can’t blame my parents for sitting back and letting the expert handle me. I’ve certainly never thought about it like that. I told my mother months ago that I needed her to be my mother, and that’s still true. I suppose I’m just ready for them to be my pa
rents on more topics again.

  “I know you find it hard to explain,” says Mum, “and that’s fine. We don’t have to understand. We just want you to say it out loud.”

  They have definitely talked to Dr. Hutt. I guess it makes sense.

  “Okay,” I say. “Here goes.”

  Dad smiles and stops shredding the serviette on the place mat in front of where he’s sitting.

  “The thing that has really kept me going through everything this year, and not just the fallout of my attack, but everything that happens to normal kids their last year of high school, is cheerleading,” I say. “And I love it a lot, which you both know. So even though it means I’m out there in public, that’s why I’ve kept up with cheerleading. It’s something that I love.”

  Mum nods and sits back in her chair. She’s not taking notes, but she does have excellent recall.

  “You know in cheesy action movies how they’re always all ‘But if we do that, the terrorists win!’?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Dad says. “That’s usually before the explosions start.”

  “Well, not to overstate, but that’s kind of how I feel about going back to Manitouwabing for cheerleading,” I say. “If I quit now, or back down just because of the location, I don’t win. And I really, really want to win.”

  “That seems good,” Mum says. “If you get blindsided by a reporter again, tell them that.”

  The newspaper article didn’t give anything away, but I had told my parents about the ridiculous things the reporter had asked, just in case. Mum is even better at letter writing than I am.

  “We’re coming to watch, of course,” Dad says. “Well, I am.”

  Mum had borrowed against this year’s vacation to take time off for me last September. She could play the my-daughter-is-a-rape-victim card, but I’m glad that she won’t, even if it does suck that she’s going to miss me at nationals. I plan to kick some serious ass, after all.